global_prosperity_wonkcast

By kristinawilson

To listen to an audio podcast, mouse over the title and click Play. Open iTunes to download and subscribe to podcasts.

Description

International development experts share their ideas on how wealthy countries can promote prosperity in developing countries.

Name

Description

Released

Price

1

African Development Bank Presidential Candidates – Scott Morris

“It’s nice to have a list,” CGD senior fellow Scott Morris told me about the shortlist of eight candidates for the Presidency of the African Development Bank. He was giving credit to the Bank for holding what appears to be a truly...

USAID Administrator Raj Shah has called for “massive private and commercial-sector investment” in development as imperative to ending extreme poverty. As he prepares to step down after five years at the helm of America’s...

In its first decade, the Millennium Challenge Corporation has set itself apart from other development agencies with its focus on three key pillars: policy performance, results, and country ownership. But has this focus translated into impact? Senior...

In our first podcast of the new year and my first podcast as new host, I speak with CGD's president Nancy Birdsall on her expectations for 2015 as they relate to global development. We cover growing inequality, the marquee moments for development in...

Pollution has no respect for party lines. In the US, Republican and Democratic districts may differ in many ways, but when it comes to the carbon emissions heating our planet, the differences are much smaller than you might expect. This is one of the...

This Wonkcast was originally recorded on September 2, 2014. As the Ebola epidemic continued to spread in West Africa, with more than 3,000 cases and 1,500 deaths, I invited CGD senior fellow Mead Over, a health economist and one of the world’

Where do you go when hit with a serious medical condition? “The hospital!” is an obvious answer for people in high income countries, but for people in low-income and emerging market economies, access to a proper hospital is often just a...

Where do you go when hit with a serious medical condition? “The hospital!” is an obvious answer for people in high income countries, but for people in low-income and emerging market economies, access to a proper hospital is often just a dream. Why ar

As the Ebola epidemic continued to spread in West Africa, with more than 3,000 cases and 1,500 deaths, I invited CGD senior fellow Mead Over, a health economist and one of the world’s top experts on the economics of HIV/AIDS, to discuss...

Mina Setra, the deputy secretary general of the Indonesia’s Indigenous Peoples’ Alliance of the Archipelago (AMAN), recently visited CGD to speak at an event about Indonesia’s efforts to prepare to participate in REDD+, the UN...

TPP? TTIP? In the world of trade negotiations, there is no shortage of acronyms. And who better to break them down for us than Harsha Singh, former deputy director general at the World Trade Organization? Harsha recently visited CGD to join Kim...

Is the revolution upon us? When it comes to data, the development world seems to be saying yes, Yes, YES! To look beyond the hype, I invited Amanda Glassman, a CGD senior fellow and director of our global health policy program, to join me on the show...

If data wants to be free, then PovcalNet, the world’s leading dataset on global poverty, is happier today because it was recently made available for download in bulk by my guests on this week’s Wonkcast CGD research fellow Justin Sandefur...

My Guest on this Wonkcast is CGD senior fellow Liliana Rojas-Suarez, who serves as chair of the Latin American Financial Regulatory Committee (CLAAF). At thei recent meeting here at CGD, CLAAF members considered the question: How would a Chinese...

Spatially explicit econometric studies… say that five times fast.
My guests on this week’s Wonkcast are CGD’s Jonah Busch and Kalifi Ferretti-Gallon, who have conducted a meta-analysis of 117 such studies to discover what...

In a recent study, CGD senior fellow Michael Clemens found that, contrary to popular belief, development in poor countries actually fosters more migration, not less. Migration is certainly a hot topic, and since these results challenge common...

Many governments try to reduce poverty and inequality through a mixture of taxes, transfers, and public services. Individual policies, such as taxation or cash transfers, are frequently evaluated on how well they address these goals. But the overall...

Love the music on the Global Prosperity Wonkcast? Hate it? Now’s your chance to help pick our next theme music. CGD communications assistant Aaron King and I have selected three possibilities from Free Music Archive. Listen to the excerpts...

CGD's Casey Dunning, Charles Kenny, and Jonathan Karver recently wrote an analysis with the provocative title "Hating on the Hurdle," that offered constructive criticism of the Millennium Challenge Corporation's (MCC) approach to penalizing corruption...

The G-20 Development Working Group Agenda – Clare Walsh and Scott Morris

Clare Walsh, a senior official in the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and the chair of the Development Working Group of the G-20, recently visited CGD for a round-table discussion with CGD senior staff. Afterwards I hosted her and...

With the Office of the US Trade Representative (USTR) reported to be considering a downgrade of India, trade ties between the two countries are even rockier than usual. Worse, the decision could be announced soon after a newly elected Indian...

Scarcity: Why Having So Little Means So Much, an interview with Sendhil Mullainathan

My guest this week, behavioral ecomomist Sendhil Mullainathan,is a Harvard professor and non-resident fellow at CGD who is transforming how people think about poverty, and what can be done to support poor people in improving their lives. Sendhil was...

In India, the government subsidizes open heart surgery but fails to provide sufficient vaccinations for all children. In Egypt, the government pays to fly affluent citizens overseas for advanced medical care, yet one-out-of-five Egyptian children are...

Interview with the John Briscoe, Winner of the 2014 Stockholm Water Prize

My guest on this week’s Global Prosperity Wonkcast is CGD visiting fellow John Briscoe, named this week as the winner of the 2014 Stockholm Water Prize.
Presented annually by the Stockholm International Water Institute to an individual...

My guest on the Wonkcast this week is Scott Morris, a senior associate here at CGD and former deputy assistant secretary at the US Treasury, where he oversaw US ties with the multilateral development banks.
Scott recently led a study group of CGD...

The House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Energy and Power held a hearing recently on electricity access in the 21st Century. Todd Moss offered an international perspective, framing energy poverty as a serious and pressing development challenge.

What role can biometrics play in aiding development? My guest this week, senior fellow Alan Gelb, explains why new biometric identification technologies may be the key to radically expanding the social, political, and commercial opportunities for...

Peace is breaking out on Capitol Hill? Can it be true? My guests this week, Tom Hart, the US executive director of the ONE Campaign, and Todd Moss, chief operating officer and senior fellow at CGD, discuss why President Obama’s Power Africa...

Median Income as a Better Measure of Development Progress—Nancy Birdsall and Christian Meyer

Development progress has traditionally been measured in terms of reductions in poverty and increases
in per capita GDP, that is, average income as calculated by dividing total income by the total population.
My guests on this week’s...

What should the US and Europe do about the relative decline of their global influence? My guest this week, CGD senior fellow Charles Kenny, has a surprising answer in his new book, The Upside of Down: Why the Rise of the Rest Is Good for the...

Corruption and Pay-for-Performance Aid – William Savedoff and Charles Kenny

Are pay-for-performance aid programs such as Cash on Delivery Aid more vulnerable to corruption than traditional input-focused programs? My guests this week, senior fellows William Savedoff and Charles Kenny, argue in a new new working paper and brief...

My guest on this week’s Global Prosperity Wonkcast is CGD senior fellow and director of the Rethinking US Development Policy program Ben Leo, here to discuss his new CGD working paper, Is Anyone Listening? in which he examines how...

News from Warsaw on the just-concluded 19th round of global climate talks suggests that there has been little progress towards a binding agreement on either cutting emissions or paying the rising costs of climate change. Nonetheless,...

It’s that time of year again when climate negotiators from around the world head to the jamboree known as the Conference of the Parties of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change or, in UN summit jargon, the UNFCCC COP. This year’s...

My guest on this week’s Global Prosperity Wonkcast is CGD senior fellow Lant Pritchett, whose new book, The Rebirth of Education: Schooling Ain’t Learning, was released last month and is now available on Kindle. The book addresses a...

My guest on this week’s Global Prosperity Wonkcast is CGD expert Vijaya Ramachandran, here to speak to us about the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) of the United Nations. The FAO is the leading global institution dedicated to...

My guest on this week’s Wonkcast is Cao Jing, one of China’s leading experts on carbon taxes. A CGD visiting fellow and associate professor of economics at Tsinghua University in Beijing, Jing was recently the subject of a...

Shutdowns come and shutdowns go. The rest of the world watches Washington’s political antics and scratches its collective head. This Wonkcast was recorded before the current shutdown, when capital was rushing out of emerging markets and back to...

Will reduced inequality be included in some form in the post-2015 development goals? Should it be? And, if so, what is the appropriate yardstick?
These were the questions explored last week at a CGD conference, Filling the Gap: Inequality Indicators...

I suspect that few Wonkcast listeners tune in expecting stock market tips, but my guest this week provides something of the sort. Todd Moss, senior fellow and vice president at CGD, said his recent paper written with Ross Thuotte titled,...

My guest this week is Frances Seymour, our newest senior fellow at the Center and one of the world’s top authorities on the complex issues at the intersection of tropical forests, development and climate change. Before joining CGD, Frances...

Seeing Africa as Business Partner, Not Charity: Todd Moss and Scott Morris on Obama’s Trip to Africa

President Obama will visit Africa this week for the second time in five years, stopping in Senegal, South Africa, and Tanzania. Expectations that Obama would pay special attention the continent ran high upon his first election, and some development...

The US government gives about $30 billion in aid each year—less than one percent of the US budget and less than 0.2 percent of the US GDP. Even so, the US United States remains the world’s largest donor, providing nearly a quarter of the...

Latin America’s central banks, having halted runaway inflation in the late in the later part of the 20th Century, now need greater latitude in their mandates to cope with the economic risks of the 21st Century, most of which are likely to...

It’s human nature to focus first on what’s immediately in front of us. That’s usually a good thing: it keeps us from tripping. But this tendency toward myopia also has huge risks, especially when it drives national and international...

My guest on the Wonkcast this week is New York Times columnist and two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Nicholas Kristof. Nick’s incisive reporting on the lives of poor and vulnerable people—especially girls and women (see, for example, Half the...

The recent collapse of a factory building in Bangladesh that killed hundreds of people making clothing for export has shined a harsh spotlight on the lack of worker protection in such low-income developing countries. But my guest on this week’s...

Last week, a bipartisan group of US senators known as the Gang of Eight introduced comprehensive immigration reform bill that includes a provision for increased temporary, low-skill work visas. CGD senior fellow Michael Clemens, a leading expert in...

Illicit Financial Flows and the Three Ts of the G8 Agenda – Alex Cobham

The day before we recorded this Wonkcast news broke of an agreement between the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain to pilot “multilateral automatic tax information exchange.” My guest, research fellow Alex Cobham, explains...

My guest on this Wonkcast is Amina Mohamed, Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), and one of the nine candidates to become the next director general (DG) of the World Trade Organization (WTO). Mohamed tells me...

The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) are the twin giants in global development and economic and financial stability, shaping the agenda for other international organizations and for governments across the world. What new issues...

My guest on this week’s Wonkcast is Herminio Blanco, Mexico’s former minister of trade and industry, and one of the nine candidates to become the next director general of the World Trade Organization. Blanco tells me the WTO is facing...

My guest on this week’s Wonkcast is Roberto Azevedo, the permanent representative of Brazil at the World Trade Organization (WTO) and one of nine candidates to be the next Director General (DG) of the WTO. Mr. Azevedo has spent more than 15...

My guests on this week’s Wonkcast are David Wheeler, senior fellow emeritus at CGD, and Nigel Sizer, director of the Global Forest Project at the World Resources Institute (WRI). They joined me after a presentation for CGD staff of Global Forest...

My guest Teho Bark, the Republic of Korea’s trade minister and candidate to be the next director general of the World Trade Organization (WTO), has witnessed the power of trade transform his country into a high-income, dynamic trading entity.
To...

My guest on this Wonkcast is Alan Kyerematen, Ghana's Minister of Trade, Industry and President’s Special Initiatives and one of nine candidates to be the next head of the World Trade Organization (WTO). In our interview, Minister Kyerematen...

Ten years after the conflict in Darfur began, Sudan and the newly-sovereign South Sudan are still experiencing terrible violence and efforts to ensure lasting peace in the region are falling short. What can the United States do differently to help...

My guest Anabel Gonzalez, Costa Rica’s minister of trade and a candidate to be the next head of the World Trade Organization (WTO), is a staunch believer in two powers: that of trade to uplift nations and that of the WTO to help navigate the...

The leadership selection process for the next Director General of the World Trade Organization (WTO) is underway. As I explained in a recent Wonkcast, we at CGD are making a modest contribution by inviting each of the nine candidates to be a guest on...

Candidates to succeed Pascal Lamy as the Director General of the World Trade Organization (WTO) presented themselves before the general council last week. All but one of the nine candidates are from developing countries, in sharp contrast to those who...

Imagine that a government employee holding an unfamiliar device and a laptop offers to scan your iris and create for you a unique identification record. Would you agree? For hundreds of millions of people in the developing world, the question is...

Last month members of the Latin American Shadow Financial Regulatory Committee (CLAAF) convened at CGD to discuss fiscal and monetary issues affecting the region. The CLAFF, which meets here twice a year, usually offers policy and regulatory...

When you opt to buy fair trade certified coffee at the grocery store instead of uncertified, how much good are you doing? My guest on this week’s Wonkcast, Kimberly Ann Elliott, draws on her recent policy paper, Is My Fair Trade Coffee Really...

Economists, development and otherwise, often assume that people given the right information will make informed decisions in their own best interest. Not! Just like the rest of us, the poor people targeted by development programs sometimes lack...

The Millennium Development Goal of universal primary-school completion has been successful. By 2011, 90 percent of countries had already met the goal; only 19 of 212 countries are unlikely to meet it by 2015.
That is good news for international...

Pogo famously said: “We have met the enemy and he is us.” That thought underpins my conversation with CGD senior fellow Bill Savedoff on corruption and development. Bill joined me last week after hosting a roundtable discussion with two...

Has Barack Obama neglected Africa in his foreign policy? In this interview with BBC News, Todd Moss discusses US engagement with Africa, the strong precedents set by presidents Clinton and Bush, and how Obama measures up.

The CGD and Social Finance Development Impact Bonds Working Group is designing a new type of investment vehicle to attract private investors who want to do good and do well while delivering development outcomes. My guests this week are two of...

Is it possible to invest in public services and make a return? In this BBC interview, Senior Fellow Owen Barder discusses the potential of Development Impact Bonds, an approach the draws the private sector into development. With DIBs, private...

Being able to prove who you are is a powerful tool that can serve as a basis for exercising rights like voting, accessing financial services and receiving transfers, and reducing fraud. Yet billions of people in the developing world lack a means to...

he World Bank’s International Development Association (IDA) was created more than 50 years ago to provide low-cost financing to the world’s poorest countries. Economic growth is lifting many of these countries into middle-income status....

It’s that time of year again. In just a few weeks, CGD will release the 2012 results of its annual Commitment to Development Index (CDI) – a product that measures the extent to which wealthy nations are supporting poorer countries’...

Our Wonkcast this week covers two separate topics and two international figures recently in the news. First, Muhammad Yunus is considered the father of microfinance as the founder of Grameen Bank. Why then has he been removed from his post? What does...

Publish What You Buy: Charles Kenny on the Case for Routine Publication of Government Contracts

Your tax dollars bought that bridge, that road, that school. But unless you live in Colombia or the UK, you probably can’t look at the contracts for these things bought on your behalf. My guest on this week’s Wonkcast is Charles Kenny,...

In this austere budget climate, generating “value for money” (VFM) is a top concern for global health funding agencies and their donors, who want the biggest bang for their buck in terms of lives saved and diseases controlled. To this end,...

Electric power has been restored across northern India to the 600 million people who recently found themselves sweltering in the dark. But the massive blackouts have left lingering questions about the country's ability to provide the infrastructure...

Reducing carbon emissions from forest clearing and degradation has become an important part of the international climate agenda. But how can we create incentives to reduce deforestation, and how can we measure success? My guest on this week’s...

Customer Reviews

Lively, accessible interviews on global development policy

by
RockOUT!

Experts from the Center for Global Development offer insights from their research and informed commentary on current issues in the policies of the U.S., other rich countries, and multilateral institutions such as the World Bank on topics such as trade, aid, technology, immigration, global health and climate change